


we tried the world

by shineyma



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:34:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24945439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: Jemma's morning was off to such a promising start, too.
Relationships: Jemma Simmons/Grant Ward
Comments: 9
Kudos: 112





	we tried the world

**Author's Note:**

> Ta-da! Week TWENTY SIX, y'all, which means I am officially HALFWAY THROUGH THIS CHALLENGE!!!!! *streamers* *confetti* *exhausted tears*
> 
> This week is also special because Thursday was my sixth biospecialist/aos ficaversary--aka exactly six years since I posted my first aos fic, counting down. I really wanted to do something special for it, write some REALLY AWESOME fic, but....that didn't pan out. So I hope you enjoy this fic instead. <3

The Lighthouse is cold, but Jemma’s bed and—more importantly—Jemma’s _husband_ are nice and warm. Less than two seconds after sitting up, she lies right back down to cuddle into his side.

Grant chuckles. “Not time to get up after all?”

“No,” she agrees, snuggling in as he wraps an arm around her waist. “Far too cold to get out of bed. Let’s sleep in.”

“Wish I could, baby, but,” he sighs theatrically, “my doctor was very insistent about keeping up regular PT if I ever wanna get this knee back to fighting shape.”

Bugger. He does need that.

“You sleep in,” he encourages, starting to shift away. “I’ll bring breakfast back when I’m done, how’s that?”

As nice as a lie-in sounds, Jemma’s spent far too much of their marriage sleeping alone; she doesn’t care for it all. Childishly, she spends a moment sulking under the blankets as Grant slides out of bed and slowly, carefully begins to gather his clothes.

She can’t keep him from his physical therapy—he truly does need it. But she doesn’t _want_ to sleep alone and wants even _less_ to get up and face the cold day. All she wants is to share some warmth with her husband.

…Well, the bedrock of marriage _is_ compromise, after all.

“I have a counter-proposal,” she announces, sitting up. Goose pimples break out on her exposed arms immediately, and she draws the covers close. “If I accompany you to your physical therapy, may I afterwards drag you back here and have my way with you?”

He pauses ever-so-briefly in the act of strapping on his knee brace, then grins. “Well, it’ll be tough, but…I think I could stand that.”

“You’re so giving,” she says, feigning awe.

“I know.” He doubles back to the bed and—carefully—leans down to kiss her gently. “It’s one of my best qualities.”

Now sufficiently motivated, Jemma manages to drag herself out of bed and get dressed without too much grumbling. Fortunately, the corridor proves much warmer than their room, so facing the day isn’t _quite_ as miserable as she expected.

In deference to Grant’s knee, they take the corridors at a slow stroll. Though he’s always angry at and impatient with what he perceives as his own weakness, Jemma’s learnt in the weeks since his injury that looping her arm through his and distracting him with conversation can keep him from dwelling too much on the need to take care.

Another thing that helps is finding people to stop and chat with, giving Grant a break in the guise of friendly conversation, but the early hour means the corridors are largely deserted. As such, Jemma perks up when she sees Daisy standing in the intersection they’re approaching—but just as quickly, her relief turns to concern.

“Does she look weird to you?” Grant asks lowly.

“Very,” Jemma murmurs back. “Did something happen on the mission last night?”

“Not that she said.” His voice, still low, is filled with frustration. “And I wasn’t exactly there to see it myself.”

She pats his arm and detangles herself from him. “Neither was I, love.”

“Jemma—”

Ignoring him, she takes a few steps towards Daisy, who’s still standing, trance-like, in the middle of the intersection of corridors. Her blank stare is aimed at the left-hand corridor, the one that leads to the training rooms, but Jemma doesn’t believe she’s seeing it at all.

“Daisy?” she asks gently. “Is something wrong?”

Daisy startles. For a moment, seeing the smile that’s starting to bloom on Daisy’s face as she turns, Jemma thinks her concern was unwarranted.

Then the half-formed smile drops into a frightening mix of horror and rage.

“Simmons!” Daisy bizarrely shouts. “Look out!”

Even as she speaks, she’s lifting her arm—lifting it to send a blast of her power _directly at Grant_.

Jemma has seen what Daisy’s power can do. She’s performed autopsies on a number of people (very bad people, but people nonetheless) who’ve died under that force. As such, she doesn’t think she can be blamed for screaming when she sees an overwhelming wave of it directed at her husband.

Fortunately, Grant’s reaction is far less useless. The injury to his knee has done nothing to weaken his paranoia _or_ his reflexes; despite the (supposed) safety of the base, he’s wearing his personal shield, and he manages to activate it before Daisy’s power hits him.

Instead, it hits the barrier, and the force of impact sends him skidding back.

Daisy pauses, scowls, and redoubles her efforts. Grant slides back another few feet.

Jemma doesn’t bother asking questions or trying to snap Daisy out of whatever’s come over her. The personal shields are still a work in progress, and she’s very familiar—from Fitz’s many rants—with the weaknesses in their construction.

If Daisy gets Grant pinned against a wall and keeps up the force, the shield could collapse in on him and suffocate him. And in light of the speed at which he’s sliding back—

Jemma runs.

There’s an element of dark humor to the fact that the security precautions Daisy and Grant designed together will now help to save him from her, but Jemma doesn’t have time to appreciate it. All she can do is sprint for the nearest emergency box, secured behind a hidden panel in (in this case) the storage closet one corridor over.

A fingerprint scan unlocks the storage closet. A hidden switch and a password open the hidden panel. The emergency box doesn’t have a lock on it. The control tablet in the emergency box requires a fingerprint scan, a passcode, and a voiceprint in the form of a passphrase.

She isn’t ashamed to admit that she’s near tears by the time she gets to say, “A scenic hike in Mount Rainer” and unlock the tablet.

Fortunately, once unlocked, the tablet opens right to the control screen Jemma needs. With relief, she activates the power dampeners in this sector—and then, after a moment’s more thought, the entire base. Excessive, perhaps, but if Daisy isn’t the only Inhuman affected, the precaution might well save a life.

That done, she grabs an ICER and two comms and runs back to where she left Grant and Daisy, activating the basewide lockdown on the way.

To her horror, she finds Daisy attacking the invisible barrier of Grant’s personal shield, punching and kicking and _clawing_ wildly, completely out of control. There’s no danger to Grant, not really, but his heartbroken, helpless expression spears straight through Jemma’s heart.

She doesn’t hesitate to shoot Daisy in the back with the ICER—or to drop it and run straight past her in favor of Grant, who drops his shield to receive her.

“Are you all right?” She grabs wildly at his arms, his face, his hands, unable to control the shaking in her own and too frantic to perform any kind of methodical exam. “Your knee—”

He catches her hands. “Jem. It’s okay. I’m fine.”

“Daisy—she almost—”

“I know,” he soothes, “I know. But the shield worked perfectly, and I’m fine.”

He’s fine. Of course he’s fine. He could have died, but he didn’t.

Jemma closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and forces back her panic and her tears both. She can’t break down every time Grant faces danger. It’s both foolish and unhelpful. Just because the last time he went into the field, he came home on a stretcher and required twelve hours of surgery—

No. He’s fine.

“Okay,” she says, opening her eyes. Grant is staring down at her with every bit of the worry she feels for him. “Right. Here.”

She retrieves the comms from her pocket and passes one to him, tucking the other in her ear before activating it.

“Director?” she asks.

Coulson’s response is immediate. “Jemma! Do you know what triggered the lockdown?”

“I did,” she admits, and steps away from Grant to crouch at Daisy’s side. She doesn’t dare touch her, not when she has no idea what manner of influence or infection she might be under, but a visual inspection doesn’t turn up any obvious wounds, and her breathing appears to be steady. “Daisy attacked Grant.”

“…She what?”

“Attacked me,” Grant says grimly. It comes to her in disorienting stereo—once from him right above her, and once through the comm in her ear. “She was shouting about me being a monster and how she wouldn’t let me hurt anyone else.”

“Are any of you hurt?” Coulson demands.

“No,” she says. “Grant and I are fine and Daisy has been ICER’d. We’ll need a containment team in Sector 4.”

“On the way,” he promises, and then adds, “And I’ll round up everyone who went on the mission last night. Unfortunately, I’m gonna need you two in isolation.”

An understandable precaution, but a frustrating one.

“Of course,” she says over Grant’s (thankfully _not_ in stereo; he must have muted his comm) groan. “We’ll isolate in the nearest lab—that will be 4-C. Have Daisy’s blood samples sent to me as soon as possible, please.”

“Jemma—”

“If we must be isolated, we can at least be useful,” she says.

Grant frowns down at her. “I’m not gonna be much use in a lab, baby.”

She mutes her comm while Coulson is sighing and agreeing.

“Of course you will,” she says, airily, as he helps her to her feet. “I’ll need eye candy, won’t I?”

Grant’s laugh doesn’t _completely_ slow her still-racing heart, but it certainly helps.

+++

Four hours (and a nearly embarrassing amount of snogging like teenagers) later, Jemma is at a loss. The facts, as she has them, make little sense.

There’s nothing showing in Daisy’s blood sample to explain her odd behavior, but the security cameras were rather more telling. At 5:17 AM, only four minutes before Jemma and Grant came across her in the corridor, Daisy appeared perfectly normal. Her pace was casual and unhurried, her shoulders occasionally moving in a way which suggests she was sighing to herself about the early wake-up—typical for Daisy.

At 5:20 AM, she stumbled and then froze in the middle of the intersection. She then stood there, dazed and unmoving, for a full forty-six seconds—at which point Jemma and Grant approached her, and at 5:21 AM, she attacked Grant.

None of the other members of the team who went out last night are displaying any odd behavior, but reviewing all the security footage from this morning revealed that Mack, May, and Elena all _also_ froze at 5:20 AM…though none of _them_ subsequently attacked anyone.

“I can’t explain it,” Jemma admits, frustrated, to Coulson and Grant. “There’s no common element or event that links the four of them to the exclusion of the rest of us. Their blood work came back normal. Mack, May, and Elena seem perfectly calm and rational, if confused. Frankly, sir, I have nothing.”

“Yeah.” On screen, Coulson drums his fingers on his desk. “Okay. In your professional opinion, do you and Grant need to stay in isolation?”

“Honestly, sir, I have no idea,” she says. “Absent any answers about the others—there’s no telling whether it’s contagious or not.”

“Right,” he says, and frowns to himself. He’s quiet for a minute, then shakes his head. “We’ll have to risk it; I want you two with me when I do this.”

Behind her, Grant pushes to his feet. “Do what, sir?”

“Talk to them,” Coulson says brightly. “Daisy woke up twenty minutes ago. I think it’s about time we see what she has to say for herself.”

+++

“Time travel,” is what Daisy has to say for herself.

Fitz scoffs. “Not possible.”

Jemma, already wincing at the rant that’s sure to be forthcoming, leans her head against the observation glass separating them from May, Mack, Elena, and Daisy. The conversation is not off to a promising start.

“It’s true,” Mack insists. “We were in the past, and now—”

“It’s _not possible_ ,” Fitz repeats. “You can’t travel in time because there _is_ no time. Time is an illusion, it’s—”

“Don’t start that again,” May interrupts, and Fitz stammers to a halt.

“Again?” Jemma asks, intrigued.

For some reason, her perfectly natural interest appears to confuse May and Daisy.

“Yes, again,” Daisy says. “Remember? Fitz told us about time and there was this…really confusing thing with paper? When I tried to save Charles?”

Jemma looks to Fitz and then Grant, at a loss. Fitz shrugs. Grant shakes his head.

“Who’s Charles?” she asks Daisy.

Daisy stares at her. “ _Charles_. Robin’s dad? Died saving my life? The attack on Transia? Does _any_ of this ring a bell?”

“No,” she says. “I don’t know who Robin is, either.”

The simple statement visibly unsettles all four of their potentially delusional teammates.

“So…you never went to the future?” Elena asks.

“The future?” Grant asks. “I thought you were in the past?”

All four of them ignore him. It’s not a surprise—though Mack, May, and Elena’s reactions when he walked in weren’t as violent as Daisy’s initial reaction to him, they certainly weren’t happy to see him—but it _is_ quite rude.

(And hurtful, though Grant will likely never admit it.)

“You said you were in the past,” Jemma repeats, rather than address their rudeness.

“We were,” Daisy says. “But we went to the future first, a couple of years ago.”

Fitz throws his hands up. “You can’t just _jaunt about_ in time—”

“Fitz,” Coulson says, and Fitz subsides.

“Why don’t you remember?” Daisy demands of him suddenly. Coulson blinks. “You were in the past with us, you should—”

“No, he wasn’t,” May says sharply.

Daisy sighs. “May—”

“That was a robot,” May very nearly _snaps_. “This is the real Coulson.”

Mack, Elena, and Daisy turn as one to stare at Coulson.

“Wait, what?” Elena asks.

Daisy looks teary. “You’re…alive?”

“Uh, yeah,” Coulson says, appearing understandably disturbed. “Last time I checked.”

There’s a strangely fraught moment of silence, and then Daisy laughs. She, it must be said, sounds a bit hysterical.

“Oh my god,” she says. “We _changed the past_.”

Fitz groans. “Director—”

“You can leave if you want,” Coulson allows.

“Thank god,” Fitz mutters, already heading for the door. “Not sticking around for this nonsense. Jemma?”

She waves him off. “I want to hear this.”

“You think it’s possible?” Coulson asks her.

“Fitz wouldn’t like to hear it,” she says, after a pause to make sure the man in question is out of earshot, “but space-time theory _is_ only a theory. There are theories that support the possibility of altering the timeline, as well.”

“ _Thank_ you,” Daisy says.

“Okay,” Coulson says. “So you four, plus a robot version of me, for some reason went to the past. How far in the past?”

“The thirties,” Elena says. “It wasn’t fun.”

No, Jemma wouldn’t imagine so. However, it does explain a bit.

“So you went to the thirties and changed the past,” she says slowly, turning the possibilities over in her mind. “Something you did or said caused a ripple effect, like knocking over the first of a series of dominoes. Likely they were small changes at first, but as the changes spread through the decades, the field of effect widened—until finally, your own personal timelines were changed. Whatever event prompted you to travel back in time never happened, which meant you never travelled in time, which _meant_ you snapped back to the present.”

“Sounds like an episode of _Star Trek_ ,” Grant says dryly.

Jemma smiles. “Quite.”

“You think that’s really what happened?” Coulson asks her.

“It would explain several things,” she says. “Like why Daisy called me _Simmons_ when she saw me. Although I can’t imagine what would drive her to attack Grant.”

“Uh, you mean _besides_ the kidnapping, torture, and murder?” Daisy asks. “Or the fact that he’s a no-good, scum-sucking, _Nazi Hydra traitor_?”

Jemma, Grant, and Coulson stare at her.

“I beg your pardon?” Jemma manages after a moment.

“Your Ward isn’t Hydra?” Elena asks curiously.

“Wh— _no_!” Jemma snaps over Grant’s “Of course I’m fucking not.”

“Sure he’s not,” Daisy says skeptically, and then pauses. “And why _wouldn’t_ I call you Simmons? What else would I call you?”

“Why _would_ you?” Jemma asks. “I wasn’t even sure you _knew_ my maiden name.”

“Maid—no.” Daisy backs away from the glass, appearing genuinely horrified. “You called him _Grant_.”

“Yeah,” Grant says, wrapping an arm around Jemma’s shoulders. He leans a bit more of his weight on her than he usually would; his knee must be paining him. “We’re married.”

Elena and Mack both make faces. May frowns.

Daisy actually gags. “Oh my god, this is a nightmare. Ew. Ew ew _ew_. Simmons, _why_? Why would you _ever_ marry _him_?”

At that, Jemma’s patience reaches its end. She loves Daisy as dearly as a sister, but in the last few hours she has at turns attacked, berated, insulted, and ignored Grant—who _also_ loves Daisy as a sister and must be hurting badly under the onslaught.

Whatever crimes Grant may or may not have committed in some alternate timeline (assuming their story is true and not some absurd cover), _this_ Grant is innocent. He is loyal and loving and recovering from a serious injury. Jemma won’t allow him to stand here and be hurt for a single moment longer.

“Quite a lot of reasons,” she says sharply, “not least of which being the fact that we’re in love.” She ducks out from under his arm so that she might take his hand instead, lacing their fingers tightly. “But I believe what _really_ decided me was his sexual prowess.”

As she intended, the blunt declaration surprises a laugh out of Grant. Coulson just sighs.

Daisy, on the other hand, gags again. “Oh god. That’s disgusting. I need brain bleach.”

“Me too,” Elena agrees faintly.

Mack raises his hand. “And me.”

“I believe you can handle this from here,” Jemma says pleasantly to Coulson, “so we’ll be taking the rest of the day off.”

Frowning in (fond) exasperation, he waves them off. “Please don’t share any details.”

“Yes, sir,” she agrees brightly, and tugs Grant towards the door. “ _You_ owe me an orgasm, love.”

She deliberately says it loud enough that their prisoners/time travelers might hear, and is rewarded by more, varying expressions of horror. Grant’s loving and highly amused smile is just a bonus.

“Actually,” he says, “we never did get to my physical therapy.”

Oh. Yes. She’d rather forgotten.

“Very well,” she says, turning on the spot. “Physical therapy first—but _then_ you owe me an orgasm.”

As always, Grant’s laugh lifts her heart. Leaning into his side, both to provide subtle support as they walk _and_ to enjoy his familiar warmth, Jemma spares one last thought for the others. Assuming their story is true, Jemma and Grant obviously weren’t married in the timeline they came from. That suggests that she has whatever changes they made to thank for the ten very happy years she and Grant have spent together.

With their cruelty in mind, she makes a mental note to tell them as much. She’s sure she and Grant will enjoy their reactions to _that_.


End file.
